The ethics of lying

A little before I sat down to write this piece, I saw a headline that screamed: “I never lie”. It featured someone from the advertising business. I couldn’t help but snigger. What’s wrong with a lie, I wondered.

Indeed. It is a question that has resided in our collective human conscience forever. So much so that it resides as one among the central themes of that philosophical tour de force the Mahabharata is—an epic narrative of the Kurukshetra war and the fates of its protagonists that comprise two warring clans, the Kauravas and the Pandavas.

In the epic, there is this part where one of the greatest warriors of all time, Drona, is on a rampage through the Pandava ranks. Related to both sides as an uncle, for various reasons, he chose to align himself with the Kauravas in this battle. If he isn’t stopped, the Pandavas fear it is only a matter of time before their army is in shreds. The oldest of the five Pandava brothers, Yudhisthira, then turns to their spiritual and philosophical mentor Krishna for counsel.

Krishna, the eighth avatar of Vishnu, the supreme god, tells Yudhisthira this is a war that must be won. And that if a lie ought to be told to win it, then the lie must be told. In this instance, Krishna knows Drona’s only weakness is his son Ashwathama. So, he asks Yudhisthira to spread the word that Ashwathama is dead. But Yudhisthira has a problem with that. His morality and reputation do not permit him to lie. He despises it as dishonest.

But even as Yudhisthira is thinking through Krishna’s proposition and its implications, Bhima, one of the Pandava brothers, kills an elephant named Ashwathama and screams: “Ashwathama is dead”. Word reaches Drona. The man thinks it is his son Bhima is talking of. Stunned, he refuses to believe the news until he hears it from Yudhisthira and summons him.

Krishna’s words still ringing in his ears, Yudhisthira goes over to his uncle’s camp.

“Is it true,” Drona asks him, “that Ashwathama is dead?”

“Yes,” Yudhisthira says. And then trails off inaudibly, “Ashwathama the elephant.”

Technically, Yudhisthira did not lie. But Drona doesn’t catch the words, lays down his weapons and bows his head in grief. In that very instant, on Krishna’s instructions, Dhrishtadyumna, Yudhisthira’s brother-in-law, chops his head off.

In Vedic society, this is the worst possible crime. The Pandavas killed an unarmed Brahmin on the back of subterfuge who in their younger years was a teacher to them as well. But it had to be done for the sake of “dharma”, argues Krishna.

When looked at from Krishna’s perspective, it makes sense. All of the brothers are killing each other, too many people are dying and the war has to end in everybody’s interest. To that extent, morality demands that Yudhisthira lie. The end, in this case, argues Krishna, justifies the means. Psychology has it that Krishna makes this call without compunction because he is emotionally more evolved.

This argument though has always been under scrutiny with much being written and debated around it. The founding fathers of the Christian church like St Augustine make it abundantly clear that a lie is a lie, no matter what the intent is. Western philosophical thought led Immanuel Kant and closer home Mahatma Gandhi find their moorings in this school of thought. They leave no room for a lie in any shade. And that is what we are taught to live by.

As Michael Sandel, who teaches philosophy at Harvard University, points out, Kant believed that telling a lie, even a white lie, is a violation of one’s own dignity. But do exceptions to the rule exist? When is ambiguity possible? For instance, if your friend were hiding inside your home, and a person intent on killing your friend came to your door and asked you where he was, would it be wrong to tell a lie? If so, would it be moral to try to mislead the murderer without actually lying?

This question has implications in modern-day business as well. In a paper published last year titled Are Liars Ethical, Maurice Schweitzer, a professor of operations and information management at Wharton University, and co-author Emma Levine veer philosophically to Krishna’s side.

The video of a conversation with them can be viewed here. The sum and substance of their argument is this: “We look at deception that sometimes can be helpful to other people. We typically think about deception as selfish deception: I lie to gain some advantage at the expense of somebody else. And we typically think of honesty as something that might be costly to me, but helpful to others.”

“In our research, we actually disentangle those two things. We think about deception that can help other people, and honesty that might be helpful to myself and maybe costly to somebody else. When we separate honesty and deception from pro-social and pro-self-interests, we find that people actually don’t care that much about deception. We find that the aversion to lying, when people say ‘Don’t lie to me’, what they really mean is, ‘Don’t be really selfish’.”

To that extent, they argue that in the kind of world we live in, it is time to revisit the dictum: Honesty is the best policy. Instead, we ought to understand when we should lie. “When does honesty actually harm trust and seem immoral? And when can deception actually breed trust be seen as moral?”

The reason this is pertinent is because in business, managers have to balance between benevolence and honesty, where benevolence is about being kind and providing supportive feedback. Honesty, on the other hand, can be critical and harsh. Not everybody is built to handle honesty. To that extent, it makes sense to err on the side of benevolence in the longer-term interests of building trust and relationships.

Schweitzer and Levine studied the tension between honesty and benevolence under controlled conditions that it may be applied in business. Their findings make for a compelling read.

“There are a lot of domains in which individuals face this conflict between honesty and benevolence very, very intensely. One example is in healthcare. Doctors frequently have to deliver very negative news to patients. And actually, prior research has found that oftentimes, doctors do lie. They inflate the positivity of these prognoses. We seem to think this is bad, and I think doctors feel a lot of tension and conflict around how to handle the situation.

“But our research suggests that perhaps doctors, and maybe teachers and parents, should be explicitly acknowledging this tension and this trade-off, and thinking about and talking about how to navigate it. When might benevolence and kindness, and maybe a little dishonesty, be right or be appreciated, and how could that enhance the delivery of medicine?

“Another case where we manage this balance between being completely honest and managing being benevolent is when we interact with children. This is true as parents, and it’s also true as educators. So, teachers will need to give feedback to students. And they have to balance this tension between being completely candid, and being benevolent and kind—demonstrating kindness and concern for the child.

“As parents, we frequently tell our kids, ‘Never lie’. But that’s not at all what we mean. For example, before we go over to grandma’s house, we might tell them, say, ‘Remember, thank grandma for that sweater, and tell her how much you like it, even though we both know you never wear it’.”

This is the kind of ambiguity and tension Krishna nailed with precision almost 3,000 years BCE when the Mahabharata was written.

But who’s to tell that to the man in advertising who claims he never lies?

Five Laws of Human Stupidity

It is entirely coincidental that while listening in to my mother and sisters argue passionately whether or not it was right on part of a leading Malayalam actor to dump his wife of many years and marry a much younger creature, I was on the phone with my friend Dr Anurag Misra, a psychiatrist based out of out of New Delhi.

Exasperated, I told him, it wasn’t just them — but all of the people in Kerala seemed to be besotted by his shenanigans. Why do people spend as much time discussing inane issues, I asked. He laughed and pointed me to a paper that sounded intriguing: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity by Carlo M. Cipolla. 

Their fascination, he said, proves Cipoll’s First Basic Law: Human stupidity asserts without ambiguity that always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation. 

What else can explain how my family — and for that matter, the most literate state in the country — had come to a standstill because of a marriage? 

Incidentally, Cipolla taught at the University of California in Berkeley and died in 2000, aged 78. A scholar of much repute, he is most known for this treatise of his. It was a national bestseller in his native Italy, was immortalized in a play in France, and translated into English as well. 

The paper got my attention right away. I read all of it and laughed through it. I was wondering what Anurag’s larger point was. How could I possibly use it to interpret what I see around me? 

While the paper is indeed humorous, it was also intended to be a deeply philosophical one. And the First Basic Law had just been proven a night after we spoke. All said and done, I spent some time on it and wondered if there is indeed some merit in what the paper articulates. Turns out, there is. 

The Second Basic Law: The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person. 

I’ll tread with caution here because by way of evidence I cannot divulge names. But this much I can assert in my defence. Perhaps, 25-odd years down the line, if I have the mental muscle left in me to write a memoir on the back of the many hundreds of interviews I have conducted over my career with business leaders, I can think up quite a few icons who would tumble. 

Two come to mind right away. What binds both is that even though they are part of different industries, they transformed how India lives. 

The first name attracts fanatical devotion. The entity he took over and the jobs his entity offers are prized. If the entity’s brand name is stamped on anything, it is by any yardstick considered the gold standard for quality, ethics and transparency. He was always dignified and handed the baton over to a man of impeccable pedigree and intended to spend his retirement in introspection and search for a higher truth. 

But as things turn out, he is also stupid. Because over the years, when he was at the helm, for reasons best known to him, he was surrounded by a “coterie". How ironic. Because he had started his career out by disbanding a firmly entrenched “coterie". What ought to be have been his golden years are now turning into a tumult. Egged on no doubt by a coterie who was at a loss without him around. What else explains his emergence from what ought to have been his sunset years? 

The second name is one that evokes images of the patriarch. His voice has often been the final word in many high-profile discussions that have needed an intermediary of impeccable integrity. The institution he created is the subject of much awe. If you were to ask me to read a eulogy to him in a single line, it would be this: “He was the Bhishma Pita Maha of all things you can ascribe to modernity in Indian business." 

But the institution closest to his heart, and one he passed to the one who met with approval from both him and the board, is now cracking. The leadership is in exit mode. Private conversations with some reveal details of an ill thought out succession plan. I have it from them that when faced with a crisis, he would often freeze, and it was left to his lieutenants to take over. 

What he couldn’t see, though, was that they had an agenda to push. Because when it was time for him to pass on the mantle, they fought a fierce battle behind the scenes. It was a dirty one, and he was completely oblivious to it. 

Whether he was willfully blind is not known. Whatever be the case, the successor turned out to be among the most manipulative. The others left and have since moved on to head entities now sniping at the top dog’s heels. How else do you describe this, but stupidity on his part? This, in spite of all of his brilliance and foresight. 

The Third (and golden) Basic Law: A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses. 

This may sound preposterous. Before getting into some examples of how it plays out in life, let us carefully go over what Cipolla presents in his paper. 

“When confronted for the first time with the Third Basic Law, rational people instinctively react with feelings of scepticism and incredulity. The fact is that reasonable people have difficulty in conceiving and understanding unreasonable behaviour. But let us abandon the lofty plane of theory and let us look pragmatically at our daily life." 

“We all recollect occasions in which a fellow took an action which resulted in his gain and our loss: we had to deal with a bandit. We also recollect cases in which a fellow took an action which resulted in his loss and our gain: we had to deal with a helpless person. We can recollect cases in which a fellow took an action by which both parties gained: he was intelligent. Such cases do indeed occur."

“But upon thoughtful reflection you must admit that these are not the events which punctuate most frequently our daily life. Our daily life is mostly, made of cases in which we lose money and/or time and/or energy and/or appetite, cheerfulness and good health because of the improbable action of some preposterous creature who has nothing to gain and indeed gains nothing from causing us embarrassment, difficulties or harm. Nobody knows, understands or can possibly explain why that preposterous creature does what he does. In fact, there is no explanation—or better there is only one explanation: the person in question is stupid." 

And Cipolla laughs it away. If you think about it for a while, it is not something to be laughed away. Because what Cipolla is eluding to is something very fundamental. And one that all of us are susceptible to. 

Imagine a situation where you are walking through the aisles of your workplace and you happen to listen in to your boss tell the people on the human resources team that your pay be raised by, say, Rs5,000. For no apparent reason. And it is not even appraisal time. Undoubtedly, you would be happy. 

Now, imagine, yourself walking down the same aisle. But this time around you hear that your pay is to be deducted by Rs5,000? What happens to you? How do you feel? 

In the first instance, the money has not come to you. In the second instance, the money has not been deducted from you. They were suggestions. What if they were pranks being played on you by somebody who had no better way to expend time? 

In any case, the individual managed to grab your attention and wear you out. How much more stupid can you get? But this is also the beginning of the theory of loss aversion. And out of it emerged a startling discovery that has been deployed to great effect by marketers to manipulate our minds to part with money. 

There are various studies that have documented around it—most notably by the neurobiologist Dean Buonomano in his book, Brain Bugs: How the Brain’s Flaws Shape Our Lives. 

In the brouhaha after demonetization, many of us went and signed up for e-wallets of all kinds. But did you consider this? All wallets are only as good as the network they operate in. 

You deposited your monies there. It earns no interest for you, unlike it would in banks or even post offices. And you can use these networks only at places that accept them. I followed the herd and deposited some money in two e-wallets. 

Many roadside vendors sport their stickers—including my chai wala. When I offered to pay him through the wallet, he said he doesn’t have it yet. I conducted an informal survey of vendors around the place I live in. Apparently, though many have the stickers they don’t have the systems in place. Some of those who do have yet to figure out how to operate it. 

Who’s stupid? The vendors for allowing the e-wallet companies to plant stickers on their stalls to attract customers? People like me who loaded wallets up to ease life because we’ve run out of cash? Or e-wallet companies trying their damndest best to grow and incurring heavy expenses on advertising and putting into place an infrastructure that can meet demand? 

As things are, I might be the stupidest of the lot, because my monies now lie with entities still scaling up and what I have on hand are IOU notes to vendors who don’t know what to do with them. 

The Fourth Basic Law: Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake. 

I have nothing else to ask here other than why is it that non-stupid people engage in stupid arguments on social media and with vocal anchors on prime-time television? 

The Fifth Basic Law: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person. 

In spite of knowing about all of these, I routinely violate it.

What it means is, there is a thin line that separates ignorance and stupidity. While the ignorant can be forgiven for not knowing better, a stupid creature understands everything in theory, but chooses to behave in totally asinine ways. That makes a stupid person a very dangerous creature.

Much like those who wield political power right now.

Career crisis's are inevitable. Deal with it

History is easy to understand because it is a series of events that can be examined and explained. Attempting to imagine the future is difficult because multiple possibilities exist. How far out into the future must we plan our careers then?

Eighteen months, on the outside, argues Peter Drucker, the legendary management teacher, consultant and author, in his seminal essay, Managing oneself. While this may sound incredulous, I have come to believe that he is right.

Most of my friends and acquaintances have now invested 20 or 25 years at work in the same domain, and sound unhappy. Asked what’s next, clichéd answers emerge such as, “Open a boutique café in a quiet town”. Whatever is the matter? When did imagination die? Drucker offers pointers.

Most people in the generation that preceded us engaged in hard (or physical) work. After having done that for 40-odd years, most are now content doing nothing.

But knowledge workers (people like us) have replaced them across most domains. Twenty-odd years into a job, one of two things happen.

1. By now, we know our jobs inside out. We are actually bored by them. To feel alive, we must do something else. But we don’t know we are bored and imagine we are going through a mid-life crisis.

2. The industry we are at work in has transformed. But we haven’t. We are redundant. But incapable of doing anything else because we haven’t ever learnt to.

In both scenarios, people like us don’t know how to deploy the remaining years of our lives. Then, there is the nature of life itself. Knowledge workers who got into the workforce have only seen the upside. But as Drucker succinctly points out, “No one can expect to live very long without experiencing a serious setback in his or her life or work… There are tragedies in one’s family life: the breakup of one’s marriage or the loss of a child… In a knowledge society, however, we expect everyone to be a success. This is clearly an impossibility. For a great many people, there is at best an absence of failure. Wherever there is success, there has to be failure.”

A report by the McKinsey Global Institute has it that by 2030 we will be at the point where, at least in theory, half of the jobs we are now paid to do can be “automated using currently demonstrated technologies”.

A caveat must be filed, though. Technology can take time to evolve and often meets with headwinds. That is why, after factoring in for some caution, the authors of the report sound confident that in at least 60% of the occupations they surveyed, one-third of the tasks humans currently manage will be capable of being automated. Simply put, 10 years from now, our workplaces will be very different.

But the boredom I pointed to earlier is already evident because the precursors to change have started to make themselves felt. Conversations with friends who work in logistics, transportation, finance, hospitality, and industries where physical labour is intense have the same narratives to share. Between artificial intelligence and automation, it is only a matter of time before they are either downgraded or made redundant. What they feel now is exasperation because they worked for over two decades to get to where they are now.

But it is incumbent upon us to proactively manage adversity. If that includes shedding all narratives about our success, prepping for new careers, and beginning all over again, so be it. 

A World Economic Forum report is an eye-opener on the kinds of jobs the future needs. These include organ part creators (those who can combine 3D printing skills with stem cell research to grow organs on demand), landfill work operators (robotic earthworms operated by humans) and mind transfer specialists (people who transfer what is in the brain to a computer), among others. 

These sound incredibly exciting. But to get on top of it, work must begin now. It takes at least 20 to 25 years to craft a new future — roughly the same time it took most exasperated professionals to get on top of their current game.

This piece was originally published in the Sunday Edition of Hindustan Times

GTD Lists versus Values Lists

Any piece that screams about how to be insanely more productive or some such thing always got my attention. I have a hypothesis on why.

Now that the mid-forties have kicked in, between a paunch, career dilemmas, early signs of chronic diseases and the onset of common sense, panic has crept in.

A voice often asks: How could you possibly have been so irresponsible in your earlier decades? I guess this is what they call a midlife crisis.

One of the first things I did to course-correct was create lists of all kinds, to embrace the Getting Things Done (GTD) way of life. What, after all, is life without a plan? These lists, most literature has it, turn people into super-efficient creatures.

But after much tinkering with GTD tools and observing of how others use them, I’m convinced it isn’t worth it. This, because people are of four types. 

Type 1: Those who make lists and get things done. The ideal way to be.

Type 2: Those who create lists and get some things done. An okay way to be.

Type 3: Those who create lists and get nothing done. A sub-optimal way to be.

Type 4: Those who don’t create lists and get everything done. A super way to be.

When I examined my logs over time, I realised I rarely behave like Type 1. I swing between Types 2 and 3. On asking around, it turned out most people are the same.

Everyone makes plans with the best intentions and their calendars look packed (what a satisfying feeling that is, isn’t it?). But asked how they feel at the end of the day, most people acknowledge that they haven’t done much — and have instead moved various tasks to other days. 

Why? Well, when panic sets in, we humans have a propensity to create narratives that console. For our own sakes, we must appear important to ourselves. So activities are lined up. But it is then inevitable that we walk into Activity Traps where we’re so preoccupied with ‘utilising’ our time that we lose sight of the purpose of our activity, and even fail to prioritise. 

GTD Lists are the worst kind of activity trap — they don’t even look or sound like one. A way around this is to embrace What Values Matter (WVM) Lists. 

Ask yourself, what are my core values? For me, work apart, these include staying healthy, nurturing my family and bonding with friends. When examined, I found that the time invested in these buckets was negligible. It is then naive to expect my body to stay strong, daughters to bond, or friends to stick around ten or twenty years from now. 

To make amends, over the last two months or so, I’ve been investing my mornings in strength-training. Every muscle aches. It’s the price of neglect. 

I’ve been trying to reach out to my daughters; they still think it awkward. While I was obsessing over GTD Lists focused on work, we forgot how to bond. When old friends are called, after pleasantries are exchanged, long silences follow. Relationships starve when not nurtured. 

But try I must. All good things take time.

This piece was originally published in Hindustan Times & all copyrights vest with HT Media

What happens at a Lit Fest

Some times, all a writer has to do is simply describe what he sees and the story tells itself, my friend and former colleague Manu Joseph told me. “It can be both amusing and insightful.” Most of us who are familiar with Manu’s body of work know he is a terrific writer with three best-selling books to his credit.

This conversation occurred last year when we met at the Bangalore Literature Festival. He was there as a speaker at the grand finale last to speak on a very controversial theme: “How do you define nationalism?”

I’ll come to that debate and the characters in a little while.

It didn’t occur to me until way after hearing Manu’s insight that I was in a sweet spot.

On the one hand, I was among an audience that would get to listen to some stars that included formidable public intellectuals like Ramchandra Guha (who opened the proceedings), Nitin Pai (who co-founded the Takshashila Institution), cricketers like Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble, policy makers of consequence like Y.V. Reddy (former governor of the Reserve Bank of India), fiery writers in Indian languages like Perumal Murugan, and the glamourous actor-turned-writer Twinkle Khanna. 

Then, on the other hand, I was offered the privilege to moderate a discussion by an all-star panel around Aadhaar — a project around which controversy had peaked last year. It was also the time when The Aadhaar Effect, a book I had co-authored on the the theme had just hit the shelves.

Aadhaar was originally thought up to create a unique identity for 1.3 billion Indians. It has got the world’s attention and was under much scrutiny. On stage with me were Jairam Ramesh, a member of Parliament and author of multiple books, Arun Maira, writer and former member of the Planning Commission, and Sanjay Jain, chief innovation officer at IIM Ahmedabad. In an earlier avatar, Jain was part of the core team that worked on creating the infrastructure for Aadhaar.

With the benefit of hindsight, I now know Manu was right. I don’t have much to do here except describe the various kinds of creatures I saw off stage, on stage, behind the stage, and describe them. This story will tell itself.

Creature #1: The Politicians

Kanhaiya Kumar and Jairam Ramesh had the audiences—me included — eating out their hands. The former, a student leader, is perceived by some as having political ambitions. Manu was on stage with him as one of the speakers trying to define what may the idea of nationalism be. 

Jairam Ramesh is somebody whom I have been trying to reach out to for a while so I may engage in a conversation to understand what his stated position on Aadhaar is. For various reasons, though, we haven’t had a chance to meet. My understanding was that while he started out as a votary of the idea of a universal identity, he now belongs to the camp opposed to it. Why did his stated position change is something that remains unclear to me. That is why I was delighted to share the stage with him; it offered a chance to ask him point-blank about where he stands.

Back to Kanhaiya Kumar. On stage at the finale on Sunday evening were people of all kinds, including Makarand Paranjape (a teacher from JNU), Manu Joseph, and Suketu Mehta, another globally acclaimed writer. Paranjape is a teacher, author and, in the public domain, is known as someone who leans to the “right wing". All of them were there to articulate their views on where to draw the thin line that separates nationalism and jingoism.

Each speaker was given five minutes to make their opening remarks. Paranjape opened with a measured tone on a scholarly note. By the time the mike reached Kanhaiya Kumar, he had heard pretty much everyone speak, Manu and Mehta included.

I watched with much fascination as Kanhaiya Kumar gently asked the moderator if he could stand up to make his opening remarks. Everybody had made their points while seated. Initially, the moderator politely declined. But Kanhaiya’s “humble" demeanour, amplified by his simple kurta and frayed trousers, conveyed to the audience an impression that he was the “outsider", the kind who inevitably gets “left out". That was his calling card.

He addressed everyone on stage as “sir" to drive home the point that he is indeed the “outsider". I thought I could see the audience members’ heads stop working as Kanhaiya started to speak and their hearts go into overdrive—mine included. All of us shouted that he be allowed to stand up to speak. Kanhaiya got what he wanted.

He made his opening remarks in broken English as opposed to the urbane language deployed by everyone else on stage. Those remarks in English sounded like prepared ones. He then apologized to the audience and told everyone his native tongue isn’t English and that he grew up in the hinterlands of Bihar. So, Hindi is the language he is most comfortable in and asked for permission to speak in Hindi.

In South India, Hindi is an imposition. But coming as an “earnest plea" from a young boy, our hearts went out to him. “Yes, yes!" we screamed. 

That was the only opening he needed. My colleague Ramnath, who doesn’t understand Hindi, stood in awe of all that Kanhaiya Kumar said. I admit I was taken in too and tweeted about it while he spoke. “My idea of nationalism does not include imposing Hindi on everyone," he said in chaste Hindi. I don’t know how many people understood all of what he said.

Unlike everyone else, he wasn’t speaking to a script, but unleashing rebuttals to those whom he didn’t agree with, most of which were directed at Paranjape. To do that, he was deploying rhetoric, not logic. The nuances were all lost. For instance, “If you think I lean to the Left, yes, I lean to the left, because I am among those who got left out."

With the benefit of hindsight, I now know he said nothing of consequence. But we applauded wildly as he went on a monologue that lasted all of 12 minutes—way past the mandated brief. Clearly, he was in political career-launch mode. I wonder how far he may go! 

I would have loved to talk with him. I ran into him later in the evening. We were staying at the hotel and on the same floor. It was time to exchange pleasantries. But he seemed tired and reluctant to engage. When I told him, though, that I write for a good part of my living, I thought I could see his demeanor change to suggest he may be amenable to conversing. I cannot be too sure. It is entirely possible I may have imagined the change. But gut feel told me there is a supremely confident politician in the making here. I shared my contact details with a companion the Supreme Court has mandated must accompany him at all times. He didn’t share his details. But I wait in the hope he may touch base sometime. I like listening to stories of all kinds.

It was much the same thing with Jairam Ramesh. I was naïve to imagine I could corner him. Just when I thought I had bowled a googly at him on stage about how the Congress party, which he represents, was in power when Aadhaar was thought up and first deployed, and that his voice as a critic now comes across as rather grating and politically-motivated, it didn’t take him much thinking to fend the googly off with a straight bat. “It’s a great idea. But badly implemented," he said, to much applause.

In response to a question from someone in the audience on whether they ought to get themselves an Aadhaar number and link everything to it as is now being mandated, he got away by saying that the law must be obeyed. But to oppose anything you do not agree with is part of the fundamental fabric of a democracy. The flourish with which he said it had me flustered and the audience on his side.

And I don’t know when and how he slipped in that his position changes as his role changes. This was a line I had heard from another member of Parliament while researching the project. Ramesh’s stated position went unchallenged and unanswered. I felt compelled to ask everyone to applaud for him. 

You don’t get to be politician by being stupid. You get to be one because you are smarter than everyone else.

Creature #2: The Critics

Most people at literary fests are the genuinely curious kinds who want to know more about the world. These form the quiet majority. They are keen to listen to people talk, engage in conversations with others, participate in events, buy books, engage in banter with assorted people, try out all kinds of food, and pick some trinkets with much gusto at events the organizers put together after much thought.

It is the vocal minority, though, which gets written about. These are the critics and regulars at all lit fests and are a peculiar breed. There are some traits that bind them.

• They carry an impression of themselves—that they are created of a different mud as opposed to the “masses" who frequent cinema halls to watch Shah Rukh Khan serenade his love interests in the Bollywood version of Switzerland.

• They also imagine themselves as more intelligent than everybody else because they are professional critics often employed at a media house. So, they think it incumbent to criticize everything. 

• These creatures get invited to events like these and are put up at plush places. They talk well, look good, and carry a certain demeanor. And, for all practical purposes, they “travel in a pack". But the serious critics are often ignored and work in mofussil places.

• Funnier still is that, unlike the Shah Rukh Khan fan who will pay hard-earned money to watch a movie first day first show, this vocal minority pays nothing for anything. But their criticism is taken seriously. “The rooms at Cannes last week were so much more better than the crap ones here," for instance.

That is why I assumed I’d be up against a “hostile audience" because by all accounts, they have decided that Aadhaar is evil. Why, I wondered, and poked around a bit. Some interesting nuggets emerged. 

Take the media critic for instance. This creature is of two kinds — the uninformed and the idiot. The uninformed exists because it hasn’t done its homework and lucked out to get to where it is.

The idiot exists because it can scream from the rooftops, but lacks substance. That is the tragedy with both Indian liberals and those on the right wing. Push them hard and they cannot defend their position beyond 500 words in print. But their decibel levels are high on television they are parasites to boot. Their existence is incumbent on real critics who do the hard work and offer feedback from the ground. Idiots don’t have the muscle to do the hard work. So, they wait until the homework is done by real reporters who go to the field to find out what may the deficiencies be and file meticulous reports.

Idiots then pick and choose what can cause the most impact, craft it to suit their interests, and bomb the place with it. All else is ignored conveniently. When questioned, they have a standard question to throw: who funds you?

Popular narratives on most media platforms are shaped by either the uninformed or the idiot.

So, as a moderator of a panel discussion on Aadhaar, my job was to place a complex theme into perspective. And through all the time I was there, I was asked by various people what I think of Project Aadhaar because I had a “Speaker" tag on my neck and many knew I am there as a moderator. 

Just that I may place the conversation into perspective, I had to state it in as many words on a public forum—that I think to provide a unique identity to over a billion people is a staggering accomplishment. And to completely diss the project is stupid. I could see a few angry faces in the front grunt in disagreement and yell that I shut up. This was stuff they didn’t want to hear. It doesn’t fit the narratives that the uninformed and the idiots believe in.

Some media outlets and social media handles reported the next morning that I was heckled by a packed audience. This was in contrast to what I could see from stage. I thought I could see an audience keen to listen to different perspectives. Because, until then, the only narrative most people have been told is that Aadhaar is a dystopian idea and intended to hijack their lives.

But because local media reports had it that I was heckled, I thought I’d check with a few friends who were in the audience. They told me the only dissonant notes were by some angry voices in the front. Darned right I was. The larger audience wanted to listen in to the multiple perspectives. But if it got reported, it would hijack the contemporary narrative now controlled by a vocal minority.

Manu thought the audience was a receptive one as well. That is why my initial irritation gave way to much amusement when my colleague Ramnath reminded me of a quote by Oscar Wilde. “There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community."

This is not to suggest I have no biases. “Why," I argued in my head, “does Twinkle Khanna have to be at a lit fest? What is her claim to fame? Is it because she is pretty? What were the organizers thinking? Or smoking? And why is she always surrounded by people who want selfies with her?" I always maintained her book sold as many copies as it did because she is pretty and was a popular actor.

Another part of me confronted myself, though, and said that it is a terribly unfair thing to suggest. I haven’t read her book and arrived at a conclusion based on some assumptions—not the truth. I haven’t met her or made any attempt to meet her either. But later in the evening, over dinner, Manu told me that he has met her while on an assignment and thinks of her as an intelligent and beautiful woman. 

But the media can shape popular narrative and informed opinions are hard to come by. To that extent, I suspect I am the kind of liberal who give liberals a bad name.

It was driven home harder still when I walked over to the table where Makarand Paranjape was having a quiet drink. He asked me my name. And then went on to tell me the historical significance of its origins and why I ought to be happy to possess it. When I told him I am not a practicing Catholic, he went on to offer me a brief treatise on the history of Catholicism and asked me some tough questions on why I gave up my faith. So much for all narratives of him being called a right winger. If he is on the right wing, give me a right winger like him any day, as opposed to a shallow liberal. (Update: His posturing on social media continue to come across as boorish in stark contrast)

The other nugget that came my way is that there are “paid critics" who are “professional socialites". After having spent two decades in journalism, it was only then that I discovered this species exists and that there is a reason they get invited to these dos. They have large followings on social medias platforms and columns as well in popular newspapers — usually tabloids or on Page 3. 

A tweet from them or a line insidiously implying a brand is a good one can get their accounts credited with as much as Rs. 5 lakh. In much the same way, they can destroy a carefully crafted reputation as well with a single line. They must be humoured and kept in the good books.

Now I know why one of them has me blocked on Twitter. I’d called him a few names on Twitter in a fit of anger after reading some rather ridiculous tweets on his timeline. The other is a creature always in the news, has answers to everybody’s problems, knows all the gossip, and I don’t bother to read. But the missus thinks of her as somebody worth emulating. All said, both live a nice, “cheap" life of the kind I envy.

Creature #3: The Writers

Everybody wants to write a book. The Bangalore Literature Festival was full of writers. Authors were being looked at in awe. Some people asked me what is it that I do for a living. When told I spend a good part of my time writing, I was often told how they have this idea for a book in their mind and if I can offer any pointers on how may they go about it.

Manu and I were catching up after a long while and the both of us laughed at how miserable a writer’s life is. It is hard work and the return on investment (ROI) is terribly low. If you may need perspective, allow me to offer some unsolicited advice on why you ought not to write a book.

• Good books aren’t whipped out of thin air. But it took Manu’s most recent book, a thin volume if size is a metric, three years to complete. We didn’t get into each other’s personal financials. But he and I know writing is lonely, takes awfully long, nobody outside the business understands why does it take as long to write one, and why we expend so much time on what pays as little as it does.

• Then there are the perverted economics of it all. In India, a book that can sell 5,000 copies is considered a bestseller. Assuming each book is priced at Rs500, a best-selling writer can hope to earn Rs2.5 lakh in royalties from the publisher—that is assuming he manages to negotiate royalties in the region of 10% for each copy sold. This too may be set off against the advance paid by a publisher.

• Reality is, thousands of books are written each year. Not all are priced at Rs500, royalties at 10% don’t kick in from the first copy sold, and only a handful make it to the bestseller list.

  So why do you write? The both of us agreed on that the only reason we continue to write is because we love to write. And that the time spent in writing is the only time we feel pure and sacred. I suspect it may be the kind of moment the spiritually-inclined may feel when in prayer.

  When reality kicks in, though, we know the only reason we can write is because there are other streams that allow us to carry on with life. Until then, we continue to delude ourselves to believe the law of averages may tilt in our favour and that what we write may someday make us rich and famous.

  So how do you get to be a full-time writer? My friend Ramnath again pointed me to a passage from Nicholas Nassim Taleb’s book Anti-Fragile. “There is a tradition with French and other European literary writers to look for a sinecure, say, the anxiety-free profession of civil servant, with few intellectual demands and high job security, the kind of low-risk job that ceases to exist when you leave the office, then spend their spare time writing, free to write whatever they want, under their own standards. There is a shockingly small number of academics among French authors."

  “American writers, on the other hand, tend to become members of the media or academics, which makes them prisoners of a system and corrupts their writing, and, in the case of research academics, makes them live under continuous anxiety, pressures, and indeed, severe bastardization of the soul."

  My observations can go on and on. But I must stop. Because, as a speaker at the festival cheekily told Ramnath and me backstage before getting onstage, “Current discourses now sound like the Arnab Monologues."

This is an edited & updated version of a piece that was first published in Mint on Sunday

Trust is just a metric

For all practical purposes I was the oddball on the table the other evening at a plush city hotel. To start with, I was the only Indian citizen. Everybody else was a foreign citizen of Indian origin. 

Everyone was sipping on single malt and looked superbly fit. I looked sloppy in my ill-fitting jeans with a potbelly struggling to peek out. Then there was the fact that everybody else had earned their degree from an Ivy league college in the US. Following which all of them had put in at least a decade at a hedge fund or large private equity firm of global consequence in either New York City or Silicon Valley. To my native eyes, all of them looked well-read, well-travelled, well-versed and well-off.

I’m not entirely sure if I was of any consequence to them. Because when asked what is it I do and when told I expend most of my time writing to earn a living—in the silent pauses that followed—I could hear them hold on to pregnant thoughts. But they were the polite kinds who bit their tongue. 

The more forthright ones have told me in the past what they really think of the likes of me. That in their scheme of things, I am among those who got disrupted by businesses people like them have funded. Anybody in the world now with a story or an opinion can voice it on places like Facebook and Twitter among other social media platforms. And that I have no reason to exist. I ought to reinvent myself. I don’t argue anymore, but have learnt to meet these silences with silence.

But this much I must say. My silences are arrogant too. Because their “coming back to India" spiels now sound like clichéd and regurgitated tripe to veterans like me. I’ve heard that one often. 

The story is a familiar one. Been there, done that (either on Wall Street or Silicon Valley), back packed through Europe, and in a moment of epiphany decided it is now time to “give back" to society. What better place to start from than the ones our parents originated from after having left it decades ago in search for a better tomorrow for themselves and their children? 

To be fair to them though, their parents earned their success the hard way. And to be fair to everyone on the table, they had worked their backsides off to get into premier organizations and positions. There is nothing I can say that can take away from that this was an incredibly intelligent bunch of people I was with.

But that said, the irony was difficult to miss as well. How can you possibly sit at one of the fanciest hotels in India, sip all night on the most expensive single malts, nibble at exquisite finger food, talk of doing something for the deprived, and not as much as cast an eye at the waiter on the table? 

I didn’t stay until everyone wound up for the night. But I suspect whatever was run up by way expenses on food and beverages may perhaps have fed two waiters and their families for at least a month. What may have been playing on their minds? Would they have thought of this as an orgy of obscene consumption? 

The thought lingered for a few days until I finally felt compelled to call Haresh Chawla, who is a partner at private equity firm True North and an active angel investor. I have known him from his earlier avatar as group CEO at Network18, a media firm he helped create, and a place I used to work in the past. There were a few reasons I called him. 

The first was that he graduated in management and engineering. But unlike those at that table, his degrees were rooted from institutions in India. The second was that before turning into an investor, he was moulded as an entrepreneur who had first-hand experience at building an enterprise in India out of India. The third is that he is now an active investor. 

What is his investing philosophy? What was I missing out from on the conversation? Why was my voice both unheard and dissed on the table? Why are the two decades I spent documenting first-hand how India operates not of any consequence to the others who have parachuted from elsewhere? Are their experiences superior to mine?

After having heard me out, Chawla reminded me of some thoughts he had articulated earlier last year and over which we have had multiple conversations. He had then suggested that it is naive to think of India as one country. Instead, he argued it is the aggregation of three countries — each of which has its own complexities and dynamics. He called these countries India One, India Two and India Three

Of this, India One comprises anywhere between 150 million and 180 million people and on average, each of its citizens earn Rs30,000 a month. Now, you have to look at those numbers in perspective because this is an average. 

I am a citizen of Indian One. But I earn a lot more than Rs.30,000 a month. It allows me the luxury to afford domestic help at home and a driver to ferry me around. But the conflict I was staring at, Chawla suggested, was because when looked at from the eyes of those who were with me on the table, I appeared to them as part of the so-called great Indian “middle-class". 

I have only one driver and a domestic help. They have multiple helps and multiple drivers and multiple cars to cater to their every need. In the country called India One that they live in, the poor to them are those whose incomes are closer to the average of Rs.30,000. 

Now that is a rather ridiculous way of looking at the entity that is India because there is no taking away from that 30%, or 400-odd million Indians, earn on average of Rs7,000 a month. This is India Two—that part of the population where the waiters tending to the table come from. They offer all the services that India One needs. But for some reason, those who live in India One cannot see the people who live in the country that is India Two. 

Just to get a sense of what those numbers mean, imagine this: If we were to add all the people in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal, they would be about 400 million. But we aren’t done with the math yet. India has 1.3 billion people. 

India One and India Two account for only 580 million people. What about the 700 million others? Where are they? Who are they? Why is it that their stories don’t get told? Why are they completely invisible and don’t even make it as waiters who tend to the tables of India One? 

Why do the superbly intelligent people who want to do good and live in India One not see those who live the countries that are India Two and India Three? Is it for a lack of conscience? 

It was inevitable then that my mind go back to a well-documented phenomenon called Wilful Blindness. It formed the theme of a much-acclaimed book and a talk by Margaret Hefernan.

Maria Popova, the curator of a lovely blog called Brain Pickings, summarized the idea beautifully: 

“The concept of Wilful Blindness, Heffernan explains, comes from the law and originates from legislature passed in the 19th century—it’s the somewhat counterintuitive idea that you’re responsible if you could have known, and should have known, something that instead you strove not to see. What’s most uneasy-making about the concept is the implication that it doesn’t matter whether the avoidance of truth is conscious. This basic mechanism of keeping ourselves in the dark, Heffernan argues, plays out in just about every aspect of life, but there are things we can do — as individuals, organizations, and nations—to lift our blinders before we walk into perilous situations that later produce the inevitable exclamation: How could I have been so blind?"

This is a school of thought Chawla subscribes to as well. That is why, as a thumb rule, he said, he consciously tries to stay away from those who are like him. Instead, he tries to seek out those who may hold views different from his and have their ears to the ground. 

“I like people like you in the media business," he said, “because you talk to multiple sets of people and have your ears to the ground." 

I didn’t quite get what he meant then and we hung up. In any case, it was getting late and the both of us thought we’d get into angst-ridden territory.

The next morning, it was inevitable my eyes peer again at voices on social media platforms. It sounded much the same again like it was on the table. Every voice suggested people in politics and media ought to be worried. Because they are no longer the arbitrators of power. 

In the past, they wielded it because there was information asymmetry. But because that asymmetry has since been demolished, I ought to rethink my future. And so, by the only metric we know how to measure the worth of a man—money—I am staring at a bankrupt future. Unless I reinvent myself.

Even as I was thinking around the import of all that, news trickled in that the British philosopher Onora O’Neill has been conferred the prestigious Berguren Prize. It is awarded annually to a thinker whose ideas have shaped self-understanding and advancement in a rapidly changing world. 

It was as good a time as any to revisit a talk by O’Neill on what we don’t understand about trust. This is a theme she has spent a good part of her 76-year-long life thinking and writing about. Allow me to quote some excerpts from her lovely 10-minute talk.

“Why do people think trust has declined? ... But, of course, I can look at the opinion polls, and the opinion polls are supposedly the source of a belief that trust has declined. When you look at opinion polls across time, there’s not much evidence for that. That’s to say, the people who were mistrusted 20 years ago, principally journalists and politicians, are still mistrusted...

“But is that good evidence? What opinion polls record is, of course, opinions. What else can they record? So, they’re looking at the generic attitudes that people report when you ask them certain questions."

She goes on then to suggest that searching for trust is futile. Instead, we ought to search for the trustworthy. Because while somebody have the right intent, it is entirely possible that individual may be incompetent to perform the task on hand. 

By way of example, while you may trust a schoolteacher with your child, it would be rather stupid to trust her with tending to a garden. She may be incompetent to deal with the task in much the same way that a gardener may be unable to teach a child. 

Therefore, she argues, “… I think that judgement requires us to look at three things. Are they competent? Are they honest? Are they reliable? And if we find that a person is competent in the relevant matters, and reliable and honest, we’ll have a pretty good reason to trust them, because they’ll be trustworthy... Trust is the response. Trustworthiness is what we have to judge. And, of course, it’s difficult."

I expended much time thinking about the import of what she said and exchanged some more notes with Haresh Chawla. As things are, this is where I stand.

• While everybody has an opinion and access to a platform, are their voices trustworthy? I’ve expended more than two decades in this business talking to people, honing my craft and trying to keep pace with technology as it evolves. So yes, everybody can voice their opinion. But ceterius paribus, I think my voice, much like that of others who are credible in the business, will continue to resonate. I also know that in keeping with the natural order of the universe, at some point in time, I will have to concede ground to those who are younger, smarter and hungrier than me. But I will not have to concede ground to uninformed voices and opinions. To that extent, my daily bread is protected.

• Pardon my language here. But spending as much time in the business has honed my bullshit detector as well. That is why I did not articulate my opinion in exasperation. Instead, it chose to distance itself from the voices on the table and seek perspective.

  Chawla tells me I did that because I live at an intersection that seeks to listen to multiple voices as opposed to listen in to what resides in an echo chamber. If I were to go by the opinions of those on the table and if I were tuned in only to popular trends on social media, I may have imagined I am out of sync with what is the consensus opinion. 

  But after having listened in to multiple voices and seeking out the trustworthy, I am now convinced of what Bertrand Russell once said: “The fact that an opinion is widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd."

  So, for whatever it is worth, folks like me aren’t going to fade into obscurity. Unless we do something stupid to erode trust built over the years. 

  On the contrary, we will continue to shape the narrative. Because trust is worked upon and earned every day. And it grows, like compound interest. It is something money cannot buy, but is earned by the sweat of the brow, not through trading opportunities, arbitrages hedging on futures, commodities, currencies or passing ridiculous opinions on social media that sound good in echo chambers. 

This article was first published in Mint on Sunday